June 25, 2014

Every summer, I'll throw a big party. The guest list isn't so big as the thought and planning that goes into it. I'll call up my inner circle of overachieving crafty types and together, we'll pull out all the stops, dreaming up menus, creating handmade invitations and doing DIY decorations. Sometimes, we'll hold up in the kitchen for days, cooking canapés until every last crab cake, dumpling and beggar's purse is prepped, plastic-wrapped and refrigerated. (In a pinch, you can find me in the freezer section of Trader Joe's debating the merits of miniature quiche.) The occasion varies—a backyard bash for the 4th, a princely feast for Jaithan's birthday—but the spirit of coming together to celebrate summer's greatest gifts lives on. Recently, I gathered guests on our lawn at Pine Hill for a sweet and savory party celebrating the engagement of friends Jessika Goranson and Mark Lewand. Better Homes & Gardens captured the day's events, proving that you don't have to wait for someone to pop the question to celebrate summer your way.

When you're entertaining outdoors, flowers don't have to be pricey. Queen Anne's Lace is abundant and pretty this time of year. Just pick whatever is in bloom. Here, farm-fresh blackberries mingle with the fragrance of just-cut roses. We made the tablecloths from simple cotton sheets dyed with festive berry-colored stripes.

In Jessika and Mark's case, opposites attract: she likes savory flavors; he's the one with the sweet tooth. That message comes through on the menu and in the invitations. Strips of watercolored paper give invitations the look of a handwoven basket. I carried the look to modern serving trays lined with copper cut into strips and woven to fit. Here's a how-to video in case you want to make your own.

Party nibbles can be as simple or elaborate as you want. A few days ahead, we filled store-bought tarts with savory and sweet fillings. Buy the frozen kind if that's easier for you. Either way, garnish with fresh herbs, serve them on a pretty tray and no one will ever know the difference! As for drinks, a self-serve station with (spiked) lemonade or punch frees you up to start a dance party mingle with your guests. And on hot days, iced fruit like strawberries, cherries or grapes is a refreshing bar-side snack. Check out this video for how to set up your own self-serve bar.

Pine Hill is a former fruit farm, so berry-picking became part of the day's festivities. To perk up old baskets, I gave them a fresh coat of paint. Berries turn up on the dessert table, too, crowning the centerpiece—a sweet and tangy tart made with fresh lemon curd. I made the lanterns using peel-and-stick copper tape and hurricanes from Michael's.

After a day of glorious good fun cocktailing, berry-picking and toasting the bride and groom to be, guests went home happy with a tasty takeaway mixing savory and sweet flavors—Lemon Thyme Shortbread cookies in muslin bags splatter-dyed to evoke berry stains.

April 18, 2014

Everything's coming up color in the April issue of Better Homes & Gardens!

To create our palette of the year, we combed trends in fashion and home, then translated them into colors that were pretty, comfortable and truly liveable.

For a living room scenario, we started with this great print from calico and a tailored sofa in a nearly neutral navy. We added a colorful rug underfoot and layered in pillows, varying patterns and textures for a more interesting look.

Mixing and matching bedding is a great way to add peronal style to the bedroom. To create the look, we repeated the lavendar on the walls in pillowcases and varied tones of coral from punchy on the coverlet ($49.96 at Wal-Mart!) to peachy on the pillows. The lamp is a DIY version of one designer Bunny Williams makes that I love!

We mixed styles in the dining room, too, blending handmade and modern pieces in a fresh palette, grounded by a rich, earthy blue. For a touch of the unexpected, we added shimmery gold flatware and bright coral napkins.

Finally, check out one of my favorite color combos in paint, mixing matte black with softer tones of pink and peach for a rich, sophisticated look.

Huge thanks to Jessica Thomas, Ellen Miller and everyone on the team at BHG who helped pull together the story! Now let's start re-decorating with color, everyone!

February 25, 2014

I shopped it here and here, and also here, but this time I did it with my good friend Anna. She interned with me at Martha back in the day, cut her teeth at Kelly Wearstler and has since gone on to do fantastic things. We were both a little hungover tuckered out that morning, but after beelining to the food stands and inhaling our breakfast burritos (hold the beans, please), we were off!

First sighting of the day: this gorgeous set of mid-century blond wood chairs. They're like a modern version of a classic ladder back, which I love. I'm thinking I'd cover them in a neutral leopard. The price was dirt cheap: $350 for all 6. We totally need new dining chairs right now; if only they had fit in the overhead bin or under the seat in front of me.

Next up: a pair of great ginger jar lamps on Chinoiserie stands. I love how the drippy golds and greens in the glaze give them a cool, mottled feel. Pair these babies with black drum shades lined in gold and you're, well, golden. Add agate finials, and I might just cry. Good in a bedroom; great in a living room; drop-dead gorg on a console (especially if it's lacquered red with a glamorous Venetian glass mirror over it.) Oh, and the price: $100. Hello?!

A stylish ginger jar lamp is a little like my favorite castaway on Gilligan's Island: a mooooovie star! This one has piercings in all the right places. I see a blue and white awning-striped shade with a black finial between two twin beds with gilded bamboo headboards and a colorful mix of blue and yellow bedding. Morning, Sunshine. Why aren't you pretty?

Next obsession: a set of four Lucite and silver candlesticks with super sleek lines. I'd cluster them on a mantle with colorful tapers in a punchy turquoise or coral-y watermelon, or on a brass tray adding height to an ottoman or coffee table. The price? $25 for four, said the nice man with the wad of cash. And in my bag they went.

I love unusal objects in a mix of materials, so this little number spoke to me. You take the horn, you take the brass, you take them both and there you have: CHIC! Even though it's a vase, water might leak; instead I'd clean it up, then place it on a bathroom vanity filled with make-up brushes...you know, for all that make-up I have.

Finally (well, not really of course but finally our sake), check out this great set of 1950s Dirilyte Anna picked up with six iced tea spoons (she'll use them to mix drinks), four cocktail forks (she'll use them for lemons and limes) and two cheese spreaders (she'll use them to, um, spread cheese). That mid-century star pattern reminds me of California agave; love!

February 13, 2014

While our friends back east battle another blizzard, I'm out in San Diego this week shooting a story for Better Homes. Jaithan's here, too, so it was the perfect opportunity to catch up with friends like Melissa Anderson and Betsy Bracken of Bixby & Ball, a super stylish home store in Solana Beach.

Melissa and her husband David live in a gorgeous house in nearby Encinitas where last Sunday they summoned the troops for a fun seafood boil at dusk.

When we arrived, the sun was just beginning to set over the Pacific. Two words about the views out back: A-MAZING.

February 05, 2014

Weekend mornings at Pine Hill Farm are one of the few times Jaithan and I can slow down, spend more time together and cook. Usually I'll do something savory, like quiche or a frittata, but a couple of weeks back, when temperatures dipped into the teens and the snow kept coming, all I could think about come Sunday morning were pancakes.

Stonewall makes a good mix that I doctored up with good vanilla extract, toasted pecans and dried cranberries rehydrated in the microwave with a little water and Grand Marnier. Citrus is in season right now, so to cut some of the sweetness in the maple syrup, I added fresh blood orange segments and juice, then let it sit while I got to work.

My new blue and white porcelain ice cream scoop came in handy again, as did a brass and enamel dish (an Egyptian souvenir by way of the Goodwill), now serving as a spoon rest.

While Jaithan minded the pancakes and turkey sausage...

I picked one of my favorite sets of old English ironstone transferware plates with lusterware details, antique monogrammed hand towels I use as napkins and simple brass flatware. What can I say? I like a little fancy with my farmhouse.

January 28, 2014

I was in Pennsylvania last week, crossing the Wright's Ferry Bridge over the Susquehanna, when I stopped (abruptly, heart racing) at Burning Bridge Antiques in Columbia.

Amid aisles of charming American-made antiques, this striped wonder caught my eye. I'm a sucker for antique linens, especially in their original boxes. Original Box (often but not always) = Never Used.

Inside I found two vintage pillowcases with a sweet ombre emroidery that would certainly add vintage charm to the twin beds in our guest room at Pine Hill. And for 8 bucks, why not?

I love a "well-placed" set of quotation marks.

After soaking the pillowcases in hot water and OxiClean (no, I'm not on the payroll; it just works), the age marks came right out!

Blue and white can seem a little too cool in the winter, especially in a guest room, but the knotty pine paneling and wool coachman's blanket add warmth. The Chinoiserie needlepoint pillow is one of my favorites; I found two of them at an estate sale down the street from us, 20 dollars for the pair. And do you remember this table? I repurposed it as a bedside and yes, I did take the booze out.

Now I think the pillowcases look just as expensive as any of the ones from fancy monogram shops. They bring a sense of humor, too, setting the tone for a fun weekend getaway at Pine Hill Farm!

January 25, 2014

Last weekend's storm cloaked Pine Hill Farm in white, leaving an icy chill in its wake.

After a couple of selfies in the snow, my friend Austin and I were craving a hearty, warming pasta...

...and for that, I knew just where to go.

Every Villarina's store feels like a beautifully curated pantry full of fresh, artisanal foods.

The pasta and sauces are all homemade; my favorite is the lobster ravioli with vodka sauce, but tonight we're having cavatelli with fresh broccoli rabe, parmasean, plenty of garlic and turkey sausage in place of pork.

A quick stop at a local Goodwill produced two treasures: an All-Clad non-stick pan, gently used, for $8.99 (new ones run for over a hundred) and a Danish blue and white porcelain ice scoop from the 50s. The pan was in perfectly good condition; it had simply never been cared for and was now baked-on with grime. After soaking it in a solution of boiling hot water and OxiClean to release the grease, I cleaned it as I normally would with dish washing liquid and water, leaving it sparkling like new.

Before putting my new pan to use, browning the turkey, we needed a little something to snack on while we cooked: a light Pinot Noir in handblown crystal glasses and manchego cheese on a Paris porcelain platter with creamware shell dishes from an antique mall outside of Boston, 10 dollars for the set.

While Austin worked her magic in the kitchen, prepping the cavatelli for boiling...

...I assembled the trays for our fireside dinner. The bowls are Eggshell Nautilis from the 30s, the goblets are smoked glass and the napkin rings are cloisonné.

The vintage bamboo trays I picked up at thrift shops, one or two at a time, until I'd completed a set of 12.

Dinner is served: a warming winter pasta for a cold, Connecticut night.

And for dessert? Snapping up from the dishrack my new Danish ice cream scoop, I served caramel-creamy dulce de leche from Häagen-Dazs with ginger snaps in champagne coupes from Crate & Barrel.

Enjoy the weekend, everyone! Back on Wednesday with a fresh take on a quirky set of vintage pillow cases you'll love!

Back to New York we went, settling into a modest one-bedroom apartment in Yorkville perched high in the sky where every toast rack, teapot, samovar, soup tureen, compote and cake stand crammed the shelves of the pharmaceutical cabinet my Pop-pop and I once stripped of its peeling paint years ago.

Guest room accommodations went from marvelous...

...to makeshift.

In the country, we used to love lighting fires in our living room that crackled and hissed...

...now we crackled and hissed at the "fires" in our living room.

The transition was tough, especially through the winter, but spring in New York always brings with it fresh, new life. It seeps into the bones and invigorates the spirit.

Soon we felt the familiar tug of our city selves, scouring flea markets in Chelsea and tag sales on Long Island.

Hello, old friend. I missed you.

In March I began a new position as East Coast Editor at Better Homes & Gardens. It's a Meredith publication headquartered in Des Moines...

...with only a handful of us holidng down the fort in Midtown.

I consider myself lucky to work with such a fun, talented group of people, but sometimes they do crack the whip! (Clockwise from the left: Better Homes & Gardens Executive Editor Oma Blaise Ford, Senior Deputy Editor Kelly Kegans, Editor in Chief Gayle Bulter and, cracking the whip Des Moines-style, my good friend and colleague, Style Director Jessica Thomas.)

Jaithan started a new gig too, doing PR, marketing and merchandising for French furniture maker Grange, where he's lucky enough to travel to Paris and work with talented decorators like Kathryn Ireland. (From the left: Grange's Managing Director Heather Ryan, Liz Raymond Montgomery and Kathryn Ireland.)

Life in New York was good again, but after spreading out in the country for years with room enough to garden, to decorate and to entertain as often as we liked, "home" in our apartment on Manhattan's Upper (way Up) East (way East) side never really felt like home. Every time I'd go to the kitchen to cook, I hoped I might have dreamt the whole thing up, and I was still back in our place in Connecticut reunited with my copper.

Reality, however, looked more like this, only there was nothing dreamy about it.

What we needed was a weekend house, a retreat from the city, something small-ish with charm we could make our own again. We found it in a 1930s Cape in Connecticut nestled in the southern foothills of the Berkshires just 90 minutes from New York.

The house is small, the land has a lot to offer. Years ago, this had been a working farm with pear and peach trees, scores of blueberry bushes and an apple orchard with just about every variety I know. Pine Hill Farm, we call it, named for the 200 year old pine trees dotting the property. Nothing about Pine Hill Farm is particuarly manicured and, for now at least, we're keeping it that way.

The snow kept coming well into March, but finally, when the ground began to thaw and we saw for the first time the possibilities in everything, in reviving a life we loved, we...

...well...we screamed! (Here's us on the Santa Monica Pier, holding on for dear life.)

But in that strange, blindsiding way dear life can be, one roller coaster ride led to another, and when we returned from California, my grandmother Dottie, whose passion for cooking and collecting plotted a course for my own life, soon passed, joining her husband, my grandfather Eddie, once again.

Immediately, I threw myself into work, traveling to High Point where I (or a slightly more svelte version of me) gave my first presentation representing Better Homes & Gardens.

(Another would come in the fall at the Lauritzen Antique & Garden show in Omaha, together with two friends and mentors, Carolyne Roehm and Kathryn Ireland.)

Up at the house, with every passing weekend, the air, the trees, the birds beckoned more and more of summer.

When the irises burst into lush hues of lavendar and purple, I couldn't wait to start creating again, making arrangements, setting tables, throwing parties for everyone or no one. Constance Spry, the English floral decorator, inspired this arrangement in a cast iron urn; the lavendar glass bowls I found covered in grime at the Antiques Garage in Chelsea, 20 dollars in all.

June brought a slew of guests to the house (here, my friend Elyse), where we'd spend mornings planting window boxes, afternoons picking blueberries...

...and evenings in the apple orchard eating dinner in the glow of the property's old stone grill.

The peaches I'd often turn into jams; this was a savory one with fragrant lemon thyme, the perfect accompaniment to grilled pork.

In July, we cleaned house with a tag sale...

...leaving both of us in dire need of down time.

When September arrived and the nights turned brisk, the leaves fell blanketlike on the farm.

Saturdays in October we'd often spend picking apples and baking.

Some of the pears I poached for a dinner party in sweet red wine, served in antique Italian pottery from an estate sale shop in San Diego.

Weekends in the country, cooking, baking, doing flowers, I always felt so free, so energized to create. Instagram became my new visual diary and the place I tried to inspire others in my absence here. But during the week in New York, in that pint-sized kitchen in the sky, I felt trapped, dreading our return every Sunday, wishing it were Friday. And so, in a punishing turn of events last year, Jaithan and I decided to move apartments yet again!

The upside is that new homes create new decorating opportunities, like these lamps I picked up at a Goodwill or side tables I found dumpster-diving in New York.

After a Chritmas soirée in the city with an eggnog bar propped with pretty cranberry and opaline glasses...

we headed back to the country just in time for our first winter's snow.

The house we decorated simply this year with a blue spruce tree from a local farm in Litchfield County.

After opening presents on Christmas morning, our friend Tori came up for a very Royal Tannenbaums holiday.

The champagne flowed freely, I assure you.

Jaithan and I spent New Year've Eve by the fire.

I made clams casino to start, followed by a stuffed pork loin, cauliflower au gratin and hericot vert. A friend on Instagram said the plates I'd found at a nearby thrift shop have a Polish coat-of-arms dating back to the 1800s!

Out with 2013, toasting with antique Bavarian coupes and celebrating...

OUR NEW BOOK!

Look for it some time next year, but in the meantime, I hope you visit us here where we'll be posting once a week from Pine Hill Farm.

Of course, if weekly posts leave you wanting more, follow me on Instagram (#pinehillfarm) for all of the action as it unfolds. Happy 2014, everyone! We're happy to be back!

December 31, 2012

Tonight, Jaithan and I are all feathers and peacocks as we ring in the new year at an intimate dinner for six here in our New York City apartment. We created the table for this month's Lonny magazine, including all of the turbans, top hats and party horns. Huge thanks to Michelle Adams and Patrick Cline at Lonny. Happy 2013, everyone!

December 22, 2012

Let's just say I'm having a Shanghai moment. I'm mad for the city at night, its neon beauty a kind of pop art wonder in itself.

Meanwhile, in a city far, far away, here's our interpretation.

When it comes to decorating for the holidays, I like to try new things, mix it up, make something. That's why I love tabletop trees. I can change the look and feel of small tree from top to bottom without spending a lot of money. Last year's trees filled the house with fragrance, a fitting choice for A Country Living Christmas. This year, we're back in the city, so we decided to change things up with a glittering, gold tinsel tree and origami-inspired ornaments we made ourselves.

At Pearl River in Soho, we found festive origami papers in red, turqouise and green, then mixed them with gold to make stars, lanterns and pleated medallions. Traditional origaimi doesn't rely on glue or tape, but let's say I needed a little help.

We filled in with inexpensive candle and ball ornaments from Michael's to create a subtle, Chinoiserie feel without being overwhelming.

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At the Antiques Garage down in Chelsea, I even found a 1950s velvet tree-topper reminiscent of the Pearl Tower in Shanghai. I think I paid about eight bucks for it.

To wrap our gifts this year, we used Asian-inspired papers from Pearl River, mixed with solids from Michael's. We made most of the embellishments ourselves, together with satin ribbon in coordinating colors. By the way, if you want to know how to tie the perfect bow that unravels like a dream, check out this video. It's an oldie but a goodie.

Here's Liberace the Elf, hanging out under the tree.

I found him at the Antiques Garage, too, along with these three brass reindeer. Looks like they're having a Shanghai moment of their own.